Hawke looked back at Stokely and the rescued American holding on for dear life in the stern of the Zodiac. He needed to get Harry Brock to safety. He’d do what he had to do. He put the damn thing halfway up on its side the turn was so tight.
The missile passed harmlessly not ten feet aft of his stern.
“Blackhawke, sink the attacking vessel. Fire when ready.”
“Aye, aye, Skipper. We confirm that. Blackhawke is launching—”
“I cannot believe this shit!” Stokely shouted. “Man, we—nobody shoots a damn missile at a little rubber boat!”
The Zodiac was lifted upward on a roiling mound of water by the massive explosion aboard the attacking boat. The soupy grey fog surrounding them instantly became an incandescent orange and the shockwave nearly ripped the four men from the small inflatable.
Whoever had had the nerve to shoot at him no longer existed.
The sea-skimming Boeing Harpoon AGM 84-E missile fired at Hawke’s command by Blackhawke was carrying nearly five hundred pounds of Destex high explosive in its warhead. The Harpoon unerringly found its target. Seven of the attacking vessel’s crewmen were killed in the initial explosion, two drowned, and one died from severe burns some hours later in a Cannes hospital. The ship burned for twenty minutes before she rolled and went to the bottom.
If you even glanced at the papers next morning, although it hardly seemed possible given the events of the first few years of the twenty-first century, the world seemed to have slipped its moorings yet again.
Somehow, a French vessel had been sunk off Cannes. Hawke would later learn she was L’Audacieuse, No. 491, a type P40 attack cutter on patrol for the French navy. L’Audacieuse, it was claimed in an appearance by the French Foreign Trade minister, Luca Bonaparte, was on routine patrol off the port of Cannes, when, without provocation, she was deliberately and viciously fired upon and sunk with all hands by a British vessel believed to be in private hands.
If you paid much attention to the screaming headlines in French newspapers or the endless state-run France Inter Radio or France 2 television reports, you would believe that France and England were on the brink of war over the incident.
At the center of this new international storm, a certain captain of British industry named Alexander Hawke.
Chapter Ten
London
AMBROSE STOOD IN THE COLD RAIN ON THE GLISTENING pavement. Traffic on Lambeth Palace Road, just outside the south entrance to St. Thomas’s Hospital, was heavy. He was waiting for Inspector Ross Sutherland to appear. The man was a good ten minutes late and Congreve, who had spent the last four hours sitting by the comatose Mrs. Purvis’s bedside in a dreary wing of St. Thomas’s Hospital, was not in the sunniest of moods. He was about to step from the curb and hail a taxicab when the dark-green Mini Cooper appeared, careening around the corner at a high rate of speed and skidding to a stop one foot from the curb.
Sutherland club-raced the thing weekends out at Goodwood and Aintree and the car still had a large number 8 stuck to the side of the door. Ambrose had never in his life imagined owning a car, but he thought of buying one at that very moment. A dark blue Bentley Saloon, prewar, with walnut picnic trays that folded down in the rear. Yes. It would look lovely parked in the gravel drive at Heart’s Ease. He could motor out to Sunningdale for his Saturday foursome or to Henley on Sundays, pack a basket, a chilled bottle of good—
The numbered passenger door flew open and Congreve bent himself down and over, contorting his comfortably large corpus so that it miraculously folded inside the rolling deathtrap. His umbrella was another matter. It refused to collapse without a Herculean effort and snapped shut only after a pinched thumb and a few well-chosen words from its owner. Only then did Ambrose pull the door shut, find what comfort he could by adjusting the rake of the barebones racing seat, and acknowledge Ross Sutherland’s presence behind the wheel.
“He stoops to conquer,” Ambrose said with a wry smile, strapping himself in. He’d learned long ago that complaining to Sutherland about his beloved Mini was air he could save for more fruitful use elsewhere. Ross murmured something vaguely apologetic, noisily engaged first gear, and accelerated at an astounding rate of speed until he was able to insert the damnable machine into an invisible hole in the stream of traffic humming along Lambeth Road. Congreve ran his fingers through his damp thatch of chestnut hair, heaved a sigh of relief at getting out of the rain, and pulled his briar pipe from an inside pocket of his sodden tweeds.
“Sorry I’m late, sir,” Sutherland said, eyeing his superior out of the corner of his eye. “A holy fuss at the Yard and I couldn’t duck out until quarter past.”
“Late? Really? I hadn’t noticed.” Congreve was packing his bowl with Peterson’s Irish. His voice was flat. “I assumed I was early.”
“Well,” Sutherland said, shifting gears, his bright tone suggesting a change of mood and subject as well, “how is dear Mrs. Purvis getting along, sir?”
“Expected to recover fully, thank God.”
“What are the doctors saying, sir?”
“The bullet nicked her heart.”
“Good lord.”
“Left ventricle. She was extremely lucky. A centimeter northeast and she’d be bound for glory.”
“I’m so—sorry, Chief. I know how fond of her you are. Whoever did this—”
“Bastards.”
“Plural?”
“I may be wrong.”
Sutherland knew better than to even chance a reply to that one. Congreve was seldom wrong, but never in doubt. After ten minutes in heavy South East London traffic, they were making quite good time motoring south along the Albert Embankment. The clouds had lifted, forming a clearly defined purplish grey line beneath which lay a band of orange sky. The sun had dipped below the visible horizon and the Thames was bathed in a red glow, a long black barge chugging slowly downstream toward Greenwich. Eventually Congreve said, “Next turning. That’s it, right here. Moreton Street. It’s a shortcut.”
A few minutes later they pulled to a stop in front of Henry Bulling’s former home at Number 12, Milk Street. Large puddles of standing water dotted the street and the downpour had eased, replaced by a vaporous rain, cold and invasive. The house itself was a halfheartedly mock Tudor wedged between an ugly rash of modern bungalows and two-story boxes of variegated flesh-toned brick. Ambrose had been subconsciously hoping the Bulling residence would surprise him with a cheery, pleasant facade. It did not.
He still felt a twinge of guilt at his good fortune in the matter of Aunt Augusta’s will.
“Do you have the key?” Ambrose asked as they mounted the wooden steps. A few soggy copies of the Times and the Daily Mirror lay against the entrance. Congreve noted that the most recent edition was five days prior. Who had canceled service?
“Aye, here you are, sir,” Sutherland said, putting his murder bag down on the peeling floorboards and fishing the marked evidence envelope containing the key out of his pocket. Sutherland, sans the pleasant Highland burr, was a dead spit for an American. A former Royal Navy aviator, Hawke’s wingman during the first Gulf War in fact, Ross had the fresh crew-cut looks and brisk bonhomie one generally associates with England’s cousins across the sea. He’d turned into a fine copper, however, and the two men had notched a few successes together. Most recently, they had succeeded in identifying the murderer of Alex Hawke’s bride, the late Victoria Sweet. That foul murder, a grotesque act of vengeance, had occurred on the steps of the chapel as the beautiful bride had emerged into the sunlight. It still rankled, it still hurt.
Ambrose and Ross had cracked the case, true enough, but it was Ross Sutherland, along with Stokely Jones, who had brought the man to summary justice on a remote island in the Florida Keys.
Congreve and his colleague had retained Yard offices in Victoria Street, but both were on semipermanent loan
